No Thank You, Mr Darcy

by Lucy Tilney

  “Do you mean you have epilepsy? If so that view of it is outdated by three-quarters of a century. Do you have no idea who your family is?”

  Nettie shook her head, “No, nor do I want to know. If they did not want me when I was five, why would they want me now at twenty-four? My brain isn’t right and I still have fits, I have no education to speak of, and I would hardly reflect well on them in society. Besides I would be a menace to my brothers marrying and a death knell to the prospects of any daughters they may have had since. Disorders like mine run in families. But that’s enough of me, I bore myself.”

  She pulled another home-knit of appalling ugliness around her shoulders and Elizabeth, noting her fine pale skin, dark blue eyes, and mass of chestnut brown hair imagined how beautiful she would be in good clothes. At that very moment, the gaunt, overdressed figure of her guardian appeared from the side of the park leading to the terraced houses. She was clearly distraught and without even a nod to Elizabeth, she took Nettie’s arm and dragged her away.

  DINNER AND ADVICE

  With the fear that she had destroyed Nettie’s little freedoms ringing in her heart, Elizabeth was informed by Charlotte that Lady Catherine had invited them to dinner.

  “I can’t have an appetite with that woman at the table. Why does she want us anyway?”

  “We are women doing things without husbands and Lady Catherine admires action and does not admire men. She also loves to interfere and know everyone’s business, including mine and now yours. She regularly sallies into the village and enquires in all the shops about the state of their business, and then she goes to the school and interrogates the headmistress about the progress of the children. She told off the ironmonger for stocking deck chairs as she suspects they encourage indolence and has been into the police station to suggest to Sergeant Wilson he post a constable at the public lavatories to deter loitering. Any unfortunate gentleman spending more than two minutes in there should be called up in front of the magistrate to explain himself. She is the magistrate.”

  “Why don’t the villagers get together with pitchforks and storm Rosings?”

  Charlotte chuckled, “It’s a good question, Lizzy, because I have it on good authority that Sergeant Wilson would probably be out of town that day. Now, as I need to keep on her right side until she can be ousted, pitchforks or otherwise, from the hospital board and a few other charities around here, please humour me.”

  “Hmmmpphhh. I hear Mr. Annesley is hoping to go to overseas to escape from her.”

  “So I have been told and am hoping to talk him out of it. He was injured in the war and is utterly unfit for foreign work, he needs a quiet parish and not a mission field. Lady Catherine has been persecuting him ever since she found out he votes Labour and the wretched woman has considerable influence in the Church through ringing up deans and archdeacons, bishops and archbishops, and for all I know the Patriarch of Constantinople, all of whom will all say anything to get her off the line.”

  “How can you persecute your own chaplain? How is it possible to worship God with a man you are making so miserable he wants to go to China?”

  “If I knew the answers to such questions I wouldn’t be a deaconess, I would be teaching theology at Oxford. Now, help me organise these baby clothes for the lying-in baskets.”

  A short while later the baskets were finished and the daily woman came to say she’d answered the telephone and Miss de Bourgh had passed on a message from her mother to say that Miss Bennet must not feel awkward about the inferiority of her evening gown. No-one would mind.

  “She likes the distinction of rank preserved,” giggled Charlotte, “I always wear my grey poplin with Grandmother Lucas’s pearl brooch. What do you have?”

  It so happened that Elizabeth had been beguiled by a length of forest green silk in Bourne & Hollingsworth a month or so ago and that her seamstress had made it up so that it skimmed her hips and flared out towards the hem with detailing in dark green velvet around the neck which set off her pale skin and tawny gold hair to perfection and paired with her parents’ Christmas gift to her of an antique necklet of clear lemon citrines set in gold it would certainly blur the lines of rank her ladyship so loved.

  The dinner setting was grand with vases of hothouse camellias the length of the table and candles burning in silver holders from Christofle. The liveried footmen were extravagantly elegant, and the gentlemen in their obligatory white-tie evening dress were only slightly less dignified than the butler in his black dress coat whose manner better befitted Buckingham Palace. As she was shown to her place, beside Colonel Fitzwilliam and opposite Anne de Bourgh, Elizabeth could not help noticing that, just as at the Christmas ball, Mr. Darcy looked particularly handsome in full evening dress.

  Lady Catherine, in black beaded silk of the sort that makes embroiderers blind, began with an assault on her nephews’ bachelor status.

  “You are the very flower of British manhood. You must marry and do your duty by England. Find yourself a good woman, Ranulf, an intelligent, well educated, high born woman with a fortune and bring her to meet me. Fitzwilliam, I insist the next time you come down from London you bring Lady Claire with you. The future of the Empire is in your loins; you must never forget that.” She waved her lorgnette to emphasise the point.

  The colonel smiled affably like a man who has been asked about his golf handicap or his plans for the summer while Darcy concentrated on his soup as if a middle-aged woman hadn’t just mentioned his loins. Elizabeth wondered how often they had to endure such abuse and why they subjected themselves to it and as her ladyship's monologue on her nephews' duty to King and Country showed no sign of ending she found it increasingly hard not to smile. Not since her mother had committed the gaffe of inviting Cousin William to dinner with the shy, saintly Bishop of Kings Lynn had she witnessed such overweening indelicacy and idiocy in one person.

  Poor Colonel Fitzwilliam, he was a truly amiable man, kind, well-mannered and sure of being popular where ever he went but with his weatherbeaten complexion and limp he was an unlikely flower. Mr. Darcy might, if the botanical comparisons were to continue, be a towering Norwegian spruce; dark, unapproachable, and foreboding. She remembered how she had secretly sympathised with him in his contempt for the vulgar middle-class ladies of Meryton pecking each other to death for status in the bridge club and the Women’s Institute but not for all the world could she imagine Mrs. Purvis or Mrs. Long sitting at the table with guests ordering their nephews to find wives and tup them like obedient rams. Yet listening to his own aunt’s impertinent tirade merely left Darcy looking faintly irritated as if he’d got on a train and found he’d left his newspaper in the waiting room.

  “I hope you do not intend to marry soon, Miss Bennet,” Lady Catherine had shifted her emphasis from the necessity for the flower of English manhood to ‘seed’ to the desirability of English womanhood to assert itself out of the drawing room and nursery and on to the national stage with no sense of contradiction.

  “No, ma’am, I have no intention of marrying soon.”

  The best thing to do with the officious lady was to agree with her as mildly as possible. Contradiction could only lead to discussions unpleasant to everyone and, besides, she knew no desirable men so it was the truth. As she spoke she was aware of Mr. Darcy looking intently at her and started to wonder what he found to criticise in her appearance. She knew her hair was neat, she knew her earrings were 22kt, her necklace striking, and her dress pure silk. She didn’t want his approbation and annoyed herself by feeling resentful at the reverse. He, on the other hand, only wanted to leave a necklace of kisses where the citrines lay around her white neck a thought unfortunately divined by his aunt whose sharp eyes were following his.

  “How is that friend of yours, Fitzwilliam? The one with the silly aeroplanes.”

  “There’s nothing silly about aeroplanes,” he replied shortly, helping himself to salmon offered by the footman, “in fact, new forms of air transport are being invented all the time.
You must have heard, Aunt Catherine, of Juan de la Cierva Codorníu, who earlier this year safely flew a single-rotor aircraft he calls an autogyro.”1

  Lady Catherine stared icily for a moment, “I never pay any attention to what foreigners are doing. Do you like your salmon? It was caught in Loch Fyne yesterday afternoon.”

  “He is the Count of la Cierva,” Darcy was enjoying something but what it was Elizabeth was not entirely sure.

  “I don’t care if he’s the man in the moon. I have no interest in dagos.”

  Elizabeth focused tightly on her gloves. She knew full well men used such words while smoking and talking to other men but she had never heard a lady use one let alone at her own dinner table with other women and strangers. She sensed rather than saw a look pass between Anne de Bourgh and Ranulf Fitzwilliam and the next voice was his.

  “I believe, Darcy, that Hadley Paige is flying fifty people a week from England to Paris?”

  Darcy nodded but before he could speak his aunt did, “These new potatoes are from our own gardens. They are the finest potatoes in Kent, indeed I daresay one could travel the length and breadth of the kingdom, including Jersey, and not find such potatoes as these.

  “Given Hadley Paige’s success,” said Darcy with remarkable enunciation for one whose mouth was still full of excellent potato, “I have just made a substantial investment for Anne in Bingley Beaufort.

  He glanced back at Elizabeth and a disinterested observer (which his aunt was not) might have been forgiven for thinking he would like to take her to Paris and if they had thought such a thing, they would have been right.

  His aunt took a small sip of wine, “Well, if Anne wants to waste her money she can. She has me to take care of her. I heard your Bingley person almost made a fool of himself again at Christmas. How many is it now? How many little gold-diggers have you had to rescue him from?”

  Good manners prevented Darcy sighing but he took more than a sip of wine. Anne flinched and stared beseechingly at Colonel Fitzwilliam who, as Elizabeth suspected he always did, stepped into the breach and talked so entertainingly of his travels, of new plays and music, and of his plans for purchasing a house in Lyme that she almost forgot whose table she was at.

  The evening continued much as it had started with Lady Catherine finding reason to berate half the world from the way the Foreign Secretary held his soup spoon to the local greengrocer for his inability to stock artichokes when she wanted them. Nor did she stop when Anne, having been told by Charlotte that Elizabeth was ‘musical’ (a phrase which always made Elizabeth feel she should have a key in her back), persuaded her to play for them. Elizabeth was not a particularly accomplished pianist or singer but she had the indisputable talent of never overreaching herself and always playing something she enjoyed. That way, she reasoned, she was happy even if no-one else was but on this occasion both Mr. Annesley and Mr. Darcy found their way to the piano so she assumed therefore that they too were happy, even if their hostess was not.

  “You play very well, Miss Bennet,” called Lady Catherine eventually from the far end of the room, “but not so well that you have to hover over her, Darcy. Do come back and tell us about Lady Claire’s year at the Vienna Conservatory.”

  Mr. Darcy turned abruptly and walked back the way he had come and Elizabeth fancied that if he picked his aunt up and launched her through the window into the fountain she wouldn’t be even slightly surprised.

  “I hear you’ve been talking to Miss Smith,” whispered Mr. Annesley as she resumed playing, “something must be done, Miss Bennet, and you have greater resources than I. It is an abominable situation. Miss Smith is not deficient, and Mrs. Younge is far from being the kind of person to have charge over an innocent, vulnerable girl.”

  Elizabeth was all astonishment but before she could speak Lady Catherine interrupted, “What are you whispering about, Mr. Annesley? Whatever it is speak up, I must have my share in the conversation.”

  Mr. Annesley merely smiled and turned the music with the skill of one well practiced, Anne and the Colonel clearly enjoyed her playing (Charlotte always did) so it only remained a pity that Mr. Darcy had to look so diabolically sullen. She finished her piece and Charlotte, emboldened by a glass of Madeira, suggested Anne play while Mr. Annesley sang so she gratefully gave up her seat and returned to the sofa where it was hard not to be aware that the colonel was glancing between her and Mr. Darcy.

  The next morning saw Mr. Darcy alone in the neglected de Bourgh family pew in Hunsford parish church. He wore a midnight blue Harris tweed suit and a crisp white shirt that contrasted delectably with his slightly olive complexion. Elizabeth frowned at herself and forced her eyes back on to her prayer-book. Delectable indeed, since when?

  He waited for her just outside and insisted on walking with her back to the rectory where she was invited for lunch. It was an awkward walk and long enough to start feeling a touch nervous. If he had wanted to see her again why had he vanished after Lydia but if he didn't want to see her, why was he singling her out now?

  She spotted the Daimler limousine parked outside Charlotte’s cottage as soon as she emerged from the glebe meadow Mr. Pringle had given over to wildflowers and there could be no doubt who in Hunsford owned such a car. As she drew nearer the lady herself emerged and suggested they have a short talk in Charlotte’s parlour and as undesirable a way of passing time as that was there was also no choice.

  “I know gals like you,” said her ladyship the moment the door was closed, “don’t think I’ve been around in this world for fifty-five years without recognising a fortune hunter. I suspected as soon as I heard you had met my nephew in Hertfordshire with that nincompoop Bingley that you had followed him here. I don’t imagine you’d have left London to visit the worthy but tedious Miss Lucas for any other reason and let me tell you…”

  “You needn’t tell me anything,” said Elizabeth cutting across her, “I am not a fortune hunter and I have no intention of standing here being accused of it.”

  She opened the door but Lady Catherine remained in place. Lydia-like she had positioned herself where she could see her reflection in the mirror and was calmly lighting a gold-tipped black cigarette.

  “Miss Bennet, my nephew is engaged to my goddaughter, Lady Claire de Bourgh, daughter of the Earl of Clereborough, and it is only a matter of time until it is announced in the newspapers. Meanwhile, I will not have his head turned by a pretty little filly who finds herself bored with working for a living. If you want to marry, my dear, I am sure there are solicitors and bank managers aplenty in London who will be very lucky to catch you, but you do not have the breeding for my nephew.”

  Elizabeth sat down. If this was to be an interminable tirade she would prefer to be comfortable.

  “If Mr. Darcy is, as you say, engaged to Lady Claire then I cannot begin to imagine what distresses your ladyship.”

  Lady Catherine snorted, “He wouldn’t be the first man to be tempted by a pretty face at the crucial moment and lose sight of what he owes himself and his family. Men have no sense where certain of their desires are concerned and you have clearly drawn him in with your arts and allurements. It must stop, Miss Bennet, and it will stop. It will stop with you getting on a train back to London before dinner. Do you understand me?”

  “I understand you perfectly,” she replied, “but as your nephew is in no danger from me the London train will have to leave without me.”

  Lady Catherine stared for a moment then drew heavily on her black cigarette, “Am I to understand you intend to remain and continue your pursuit of my nephew? I can assure you, Miss Bennet, you will receive no more invitations to Rosings.”

  “And I have assured you that I am not interested in your nephew and were your nephew interested in me I am sure he would not be relying on his aunt to invite us both to dinner at the same time. He is over thirty, after all.”

  If Catherine Fitzwilliam de Bourgh had ever looked inelegant in the entire course of her life, childbirth included, it would have b
een then. Her eyes widened and her jaw slackened so much so that she had to grab at her cigarette to prevent it dropping on the hearth rug.

  “How dare you gainsay me?” she spluttered.

  “I dare,” said Elizabeth, “and now, ma’am, as I am not in the business of chasing millionaires I have some writing to do for my magazine.”

  With more politeness than she felt and mostly to drive home her point, she held open the parlour door and with a withering glance and a choking cloud of Chanel No. 5 the daughter of the late Earl of Alndale swished past her and the stately Daimler glided off towards the manor house.

  Relieved of her unwanted company she threw up the windows and went into the kitchen to make tea.

  1 Predecessor of the helicopter.

  PRESUMPTION

  Elizabeth took the tea into the parlour which was no longer reeking of expensive proof of her ladyship’s occasional visits to Harrods. She settled in the biggest armchair shaking her head at Lady Catherine’s bizarre notion that Mr. Darcy was attracted to her and began to re-read Jane’s last letter which slipped into an increasingly miserable hour going back and forth on the subject of Jane and Charles, analysing all her recent conversations with Jane for signs of a deepening of depression, and hoping life in London would create a dramatic enough change for her to do something with her life for herself.

  When the doorbell rang she was irritated and thought for a moment she might ignore it but remembering that people in need were likely to come to Charlotte she went to see who it was and to her astonishment there stood Mr. Darcy. He nodded calmly when she told him Charlotte was out and said that he had come to see her so, seeing no alternative for the second time that day to entertain an unwanted guest, she showed him into the parlour.

  After a silence of three or four minutes during which he arranged and rearranged his hat and gloves on the table, he finally spoke.